Effects of investing in agriculture in the countries of Central-Eastern and Southeast Europe with a special emphasis on the Republic of Serbia

The paper considers the role of investments in agriculture at the macro level, observing 13 countries over ten years. The countries included in the research are the Central-Eastern and South-East European countries. The importance of investments in agriculture is seen through their direct impact on the increase in production in agriculture, i.e., through the increase in gross added value in agriculture. The primary objective of this research is to determine, using the SPSS program, which independent variables affect the gross added value in agriculture. In other words, it aims to select variables for developing and evaluating the model that will show a significant relationship with the gross added value in agriculture. Due to the nature of the research subject, the dependency technique was applied in the paper, specifically, multiple regression analysis, which determined the correlation level of the selected variables with the increase in agricultural production. As for the qualitative methods, the statistical method was used to collect, process and present the results, while the comparative method was used to compare the collected data and draw certain conclusions. The research results indicate that investments play a significant role in achieving gross added value in agriculture, which means that investments largely determine economic growth in the agricultural sector. By applying the appropriate model, it was also determined to what extent variations in gross value added in agriculture can be explained by variations in total agricultural investments. By developing the obtained model, it was concluded that, in addition to other included variables, investments have the most significant impact on the gross added value in agriculture. More specifically, the most important investments are the ones that directly affect agriculture and investments in research and development.